Swype for the Masses

One of the most essential pieces of software on my Droid is Swype, the astonishing-yes, astonishing-utility that lets you enter text by whipping your finger around the on-screen keyboard as fast as you can go. As long as your finger glides past the characters in the word you intend you're good, and you don't need to tap, tap, tap. But I'm one of the lucky few that the Swype folks have permitted to install the software: The company's business model involves licensing the app to phone makers as a preinstalled feature.